1ACross is happy to present “Headline”, from “Spiffytrix”, who has come back from a self-imposed hiatus to set exclusively for our solvers. Although he has described this grid as “Spiffytrix’s first attempt on return – glaringly vacuous and dull (5), I can assure you that it is far from that:)
Answers can be submitted by anyone who wishes to participate, on or before EOD 2nd Dec. 2020. All those who submit entries have a chance to enter our leader board for 2020.
Annotations for the puzzle will be discussed at 1ACross on Thursday, Dec. 3, 2020.
Here are the instructions for the Puzzle:
Three thematic clues lack further definition.
Their wordplay gives two worded answers each, of which one answer will also most likely be your choice for “Grid Headline”.
Irrespective of your choice, the longer word of all the three thematic answers (which has been enumerated) is to be entered at the respective clue lights.
However, only one of the three shorter words corresponding to your choice for the grid headline, is to be entered at 23.
Remaining two are to be discarded.
Further, depending on your entry at 23, only a fragment of the clues for the grid entries intersecting 23 is to be used for wordplay and definition.
Here are the Bonus questions at the end of the puzzle:
1.What’s the grid headline (2 words)?
2.What were the alternate answers for 23 that you discarded?
3.What are the alternate answers for 24 and 26 due to the discarded 23?
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